APPT9 Manila: Chua and Yu eliminated

Down to nine players, it was time to show each other the stuff they were made of and clearly everyone at the final table was a heavy hitter. So it is no surprise that when the cards were in the air, out came a lot of muscle.

It began with an intense pre-flop raise war between three players. Iona Christopher Finkenrath, Ying Lin Chua, and Thomas Lee. Action began with Finkenrath doubling it up to 60K, Chua bumped it to 100K, then a four-bet on top of that coming from Lee on the button. The Canadian's 250K was good enough to win the pot as both Finkenrath and Chua folded.

Two hands later, Lee attempted to do the same by three-betting Hayato Kitajima's min raise but to his immediate left, Douglas Olsson put the brakes on him by shoving. Both Kitajima and Lee folded without asking for a count.Despite losing some chips to Olsson, Lee continued to try and control the table. He three-bet again on a min raise by Chua. Chua opted to call and the flop ran A♣J♠4♦. Chua checked it to Lee who continued for 125K. Chua called. At the turn of 4♥, Chua changed gears and led out for 185K and Lee called. The on the river of 5♥, Chua jumped in with a shove and Lee snap-called then showed his A♥K♠ top pair crushing Chua's failed bluff attempt with K♦Q♥. Lee eliminated Chua in 9th place. Chua earned PHP498,900 for his finish. Lee, on the other, escalated to over 2M chips making him second-in-chip-command to Kitajima.

Now even with a short stack, you are still one to contend with at the final table, such as the case of Filipino player Jesse Leonarez. Coming in to the final table at the bottom of the rung, he doubled up through Terry Fan and followed it up with great use of his chips against Winfred Yu enticing him to call him all the way down to the river. When Leonarez flipped open a full house, some fans celebrated and Yu mucked his hand.

Shortly after, Yu dumped in his remaining chips in the middle and found no salvation when Terry Fan and Aaron Lim followed suit for a three-way all in extravaganza. Fan got the best of them with his queens dominating the whole way against Lim's jacks and Yu's ace-high. For Yu, his run was stopped short at 8th place and had to settle for a PHP598,700 payout while Fan skyrocketed to well over 1M chips.

With that elimination, we are now down to 7 players with Fan joining the the seven-digit chip mark.